Free trade is not what lifts all boats. That was the Arthur Laffer statement during the Reagen years (1980's)

When the trade partners America deals with (excluding Canada) actively manipulate the US system and its politicians through Washingtons high paid lawyers and lobby groups, they sell their soul to the Trade devil.

America is being sold out by large multi national corporations and their highly paid lobbyists. At the end of the day your elected official is to blame but then in effect it is you the Voter who is ultimately responsible for allowing such behavior by yourr elected officials.

America can no longer lift so called poorer nations by shipping them our manufacturing jobs. America is bankrupt. If it were not for the fact that the USD still remains the reserve currency of the free world we would be written off like Russia was in the 1980's. They have risen again although with a dictatorship (Putin). You don't see Russia selling off their core industries nor do you see China, Brazil, etc.

Free Trade is great for the few rich multinational Corporations and individuals with offshore banking who call themselves American but are in fact loyal to no one but themselves. Wake up America! Rebuild your core manufacturing and restrict cheap Chinese and Asian goods. Walmart and Asian manufacturers are like the drug dealers of cheap goods to the poor American Public. Remember cheap goods come at a price. Cheap goods, poorly made cost millions of American jobs. Do you really believe the Chinese will reciprocate and buy US made goods? Forget it!!!!!!! They will copy our patented products, violate all international laws and sell them back to the world under their own name brands.

When you elect a new government this fall, you had better insure those officials you elect make a clear and firm commitment to altering the trade laws or American will continue its swift fall into bankruptcy and the USD will slowly be removed as the reserve currency.

As I've said before, I don't believe reality is full of extremes (like black or white) or free trade versus no-free trade. The answer on free trade is a big "depends."

For example, NAFTA did help stablize Mexico. But, it has really affected the inequality in the country and due to US/Canadian farm subsidies, poor Mexican farmers were overwhelmed by cheap agri-imports. This created a lot of internal displacement, including a surge in illegal immigration to the United States (just look at the profile of the people who are illegally coming - they're not wealthy middle class Mexicans from the cities, but poor peasant farmers who lost a livelihood at home).

A study done to see the effects of NAFTA has shown that between Canada, the USA and Mexico, only Canada has done superbly. The USA has done well, and so has Mexico in varying degrees. For workers, Canada did much better because it had social safety nets. Mexico, as mentioned above, had a lot of hardship for mal-affected individuals due to free trade and no social safety net. The US was somewhere in between. My point is that, if you're going to have free trade, you better compliment it with other policies (for example, Agriculture should have been included, thus ensuring a livelihood for Mexican farmers, which would also reduce illegal immigration to the US). There is a huge cost to the US due to illegal immigration. It does push down the real wages of poor and working class individuals as the supply of labor in their "lower skill segement" of the labor market goes up. This is a loss in wages for low income workers in America, even though it's a net gain for corporations who pay lower wages and thus earn higher profits.

There is another matter of trade that needs to be addressed. Free trade between two developed nations only creates larger economies of scale and greater efficiency (example: Canadian and US automarkers sharing parts and linking up in vertical integration). Whereas free trade between a rich country and a poor country is a totally different matter. It creates a whole shift in industries (example: low paying manufacturing jobs head to Mexico).

There has been tangible benefits, yes...but in the long term, the gains from free trade must be USED and re-invested instead of consumed. Most of the benefits for NAFTA has gone to big corporations -- the US government should have levied a higher income tax on those execs and use the revenue to retrain displaced workers who once made toys and shoes but can be educated to produce electronics and microchips. There should have also been a collective effort in the United States to educate all children who will enter the work force in 10-15 years to be highly skilled for such jobs.

But, in the United States, all the cost of training (or re-training) falls on the shoulders of individuals who are now drowning in student loans. Some do not even bother. Thus, there is a large barrier to entry for labor to move into more competitive "high skilled" jobs. This creates a permanent underclass that is starting to grow in America. In Western Europe, the governments pay for all higher education. This allows greater social mobility from the poor underclass to the upperclass, which creates more competition for labor (so, the socialist program of funding universal college education enhances the capitalist competitiveness of the labor markets). Government funding of college education also creates an incentive for the governments to improve primary and secondary education because if they don't, they'll have to teach kids remedial math and English at college (right now a record number of kids are doing remedial education in college...but at their own expense, thus the government passed the burden on the student).

In Mexico, the contrast is even larger as that country's revenues overwhelming depend on oil revenues (low taxes on the rich). It has one of the highest inequality in the world, and for a poorer country, its economy is not growing as fast as it could. Why's that? -- because everyone in Mexico is working at their labor-capacity. The high-skilled are working up to their potential and thus having standards of living like Europeans. The low skilled are working up to their potential too and earning low salaries. The only way for Mexico to raise GDP growth is to produce higher end products. It can continue to do that by getting US investments and FDI at the expense of US manufacturing jobs, or it can use the gains from free trade in NAFTA to tax those who benefited, and spend more money on educating the poor so that their labor-potential can rise from producing shoes and textiles to producing high-end manufacturing goods, precision engineering, etc. This raises salaries, and national incomes rising means high GDP.

Why does it seem that people believe that American Democrats trade policies are very left-leaning? Not that I believe their policies are the best, but please correct me if I'm wrong, I thought that mainstream American politicians are pretty pro free trade relative to other countries' politicians?That being said, it is my opinion (probably only worth 1 cent) that international trade should be as deregulated as possible, with the caveat being there must be regulation on the back end to ensure the monetary benefits are shared enough so that those losing jobs have some sort of net.For instance, if we remove farm subsidies, who benefits? The companies selling imported foods? And maybe consumers from lowered prices? Sounds good, but some amount must be shaved off those benefits to ensure some sense of gradual transition for the soon to be unemployed farmers...

What a paradoxal situation? USA once the forerunner of free international trade, where its producers had competitive edge and other countries were mainly the consumers of US goods, now abandons the basic tenet of globalisation when it is loosing in international market. However, any substantial retreat from the international free trade rules will of course hurt US more than now. This is the result of globalising world where the global financial and economic power is shifting to Asia from the West.

I laughed to myself when I read that Pelosi was using the Columbian Trade issue as a bargaining chip. It's never been surprising to me to hear that most American's fear ideas like free trade. I wouldn't be surprised to find that most American's don't know the merits of free trade versus the "Mechanism and Protectionist" ideas of days long gone. Clinton flip-flops on trade issues? So it ain't so...

Tawp. Suppose there was a country where slavery was widely practiced, should it be allowed entry into the WTO? Would we be destroying their comparative advantage if we refuse them full integration into the global trading system. Might we create a race toward the bottom in other countries if we do? Rigid ideology does not make you a good capitalist.As Economist readers, I presume most of us appreciate the benefits of free trade. However, tawp's "bottom line" presumes that "rich" countries became rich simply because of "hard work", and have now become lazy and want to shut out their poor counterparts. Rich countries became rich because they embraced a culture of transparent (non-corrupt) capitalism with strong institutions, etc. etc. etc. If we encourage these traits in our trading partners it will help them to become rich as well. Trade is not a zero sum game.Since Columbia is a small country whose impact in the global economy is mostly insignificant, that portion of the current debate is a bit phony. However, the merits of including labour and environmental standards in discussions of trade is still valid.

Honestly, the Republicans and Democrats are not that different in trade policies. Sure the campaign rhetoric gives the allusion to a big difference when in reality there is little. It was Bill Clinton, a Democrat, who deployed NAFTA in the first place, not a Republican. The current Republican president hasn’t done anything so special for America. A war financed by debt has help pushed the dollar to ridiculously low levels. People can give part thanks Bush for higher prices at Wal-Mart.

the americans should learn how to lower their ego and to learn how to trade in the 21st century. consider the amount of foreign debt each american is sharing at the moment, the only way to pay back is to trade unless you guys have find a new gold mine somewhere in nowhere.

I find it interesting how you mention Obama's pledge in a debate to threaten to pull out of NAFTA as a mark against him - while being so much more lenient to Clinton - when that pledge was in response to a specific question by Tim Russert asking if he would pull out, and Clinton made the pledge (in response to the same question) literally 20 or 30 seconds before Obama did.I personally think that neither candidate would have gone quite so far on their own initiative, but with the pushing of the American press to take a yes-or-no stand on the question, neither could say "no" and still remain credible among working-class voters.

The rhetoric on trade and immigration is akin to training a hunting dog to find coyote traps. I suppose I'm not surprised that politicians are leery of making voters feel less victimized but it's a little frustrating watching a University of Chicago lecturer and a Clinton demagogue this way.

"Would you agree that an individual should not be punished or rewarded simply because of the country in which he or she had the luck to be born?"

Stated less starkly than "rewarded or punished", isn't that the crux of the issue? Economic self-interst is the heart of any nation. Governance as the allocation of resources is, by global extension, a function of trade policy. Economic self-interest should have, at least in theory, a directly proportional impact on the welfare of individuals. Individuals pay for government spending, and should benefit or suffer from governmental policies regarding trade. This is not punishing or rewarding, simply allocation of resources to or from individuals in relation to national priorities.

Compounding the matter is the fungability of any tye of aid. What wealthy nations contribute in the form of food, energy, health, etc. off-sets what the poorer nations must spend on domestic priorities.

Put another way, how could America avoid "punishing" the citizens of North Korea without supporting nuclear proliferation?

I'm not against aid or trade, but we simply cannot have nations without perceived winners and losers, punished and rewarded.

Charlie Rangle, who i have grown a great respect for braking with the partisan system, said it best, the facts on the ground make sense but politics is in the air. In American trade deals, we should look at the balance of trade, and market access as determining if a trade deal needs to be reworked. Many of our current trade relations need to be reworked under this rubric, and Colombian trade fits this rubric.

I find it slightly ironic that Hillary Clinton decries the plight of American workers whose jobs have been lost to foreign competition, yet she sat on the board of WalMart - America's largest outlet for foreign-made goods.